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#1
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Chelvam wrote:
The above subject is actually a seminar given by James Boyk. I did a quick search on google to see whether it has been discussed here on RAHE but could not find one. Some interesting excerpts:- [...] Thank you for posting this. It's always interesting to hear the perspectives of musicians on sound reproduction. Mike Prager North Carolina, USA |
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#2
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Capturing Music: The Impossible Task
It's not necessarily true that "false in one is false in all" but Boyk's
admiration for this particular bit of dreck is worrisome. " I'm eager to see whether the test would correlate with specific subtle aspects of performance. For example, my friend Doug Sax, a recording and mastering engineer, tested two line amps himself by a clever method to learn about their performance with very soft signals. He had someone talk at one end of a studio; and put a microphone at the other end, 90 feet away. The output of the mike ran to a power amp and speakers, and he could hear and understand the speech over the speakers. In the cable between the mike and the power amp was a switch. When turned to its other position, it inserted a line amp between the mike and the power amp. The line amp's volume control was adjusted so the volume didn't change. If the line amp were perfect, adding it to the chain wouldn't change anything. And that's what happened with one of the line amps, a unit Sax had used for years, and which he liked. Then he substituted a different line amp, which had better THD and noise specs than the first. When it was switched in, he tells me, the spoken words became unintelligible. To be sure, they were very soft, but lots of things in music are soft, like the dying away of reverberation." All this tells ME is that Doug had become VERY familiar with the way speech sounds through one device and wasn't familiar with the other. BOTH could have been distorted horribly. An extreme example of this are people who get used to the way cerebral palsy victims speak and can then interpret for others. Just because they understand one impaired speaker doesn't mean they could understand another. (NOTE - this was an extreme example - don't get too carried away with any analogy). And another "Such listeners would be useful to audio designers. But in general, designers and manufacturers don't ‘get' it about listening. This is why most gear isn't very good. One fellow who makes very expensive speakers seemed to be bragging that he doesn't listen to his own designs. (He also claimed to be a music lover, but didn't know the make of piano in his own home!) [Audience: Laughter.]" I don't know the make of the piano in my home either, inherited as it was, but I do love music. What does one have to do with the other? And another "Here's how a playback system damaged my Beethoven. When my first album came out, I sent a copy to a young pianist friend at a conservatory. She wrote back very embarrassed, saying that the first movement of my Beethoven had too many climaxes, and my tone was "bangy." This was crushing. When summer came, she wrote again. At home for vacation, she had listened to the album on her father's system, much better than her own dorm-room player. Now she did not hear the extra climaxes or the banging, and she loved the performance. In a flash, I realized what had been wrong. The recording has a wide dynamic range. When the music got loud enough, it had overloaded her dorm system. Any such passage came out equal in loudness to any other such passage; hence, multiple climaxes. They were graded dynamically in the playing and on the recording, but couldn't be distinguished by the system. Overloading also makes the reproduced tone ugly; but because she was thinking in musical terms, she heard the ugliness created by her system as though it were created at the piano! ( Stereophile magazine ranked this album a "Record to Die For." )" Is Boyk seriously suggesting that one can't measure when amplifiers clip? Or when speaker cones hit their limits? "Here's how a common problem in playback systems could damage Schubert: In the posthumous A-major sonata, the bass comes in groups of four sequential notes, with the first of each group holding through the remaining three. ( Note 13 http://www.performancerecordings.com/capturing-music.html#note13 ) But for two groups, it's not held. This contrast in texture means something to Schubert, but if there were a resonance in the audio system on either of these unheld notes, or a broad resonance in the general area of their pitch—as many cheap loudspeakers do have—these notes might seem to be held when they're not; and the textural contrast would be damaged." Resonances are routinely measured and damped - a spectrum analyzer can help a lot too. "Here's how mis-design of a playback component can frustrate the listener: The KLH company made a small two-way speaker that came with a box to connect between your preamp and power amp. After calibration, when you played soft music, the speaker would go down much deeper in the bass than you would expect from its tiny woofer. As the music got louder, if the low frequencies were still present, the box reduced them electronically to prevent the woofer cone traveling too far and damaging itself. You could play the speaker as loud as you like, and it would always give you the most bass consistent with its own safety. This was clever; but consider its musical impact. At climaxes, things tend to be loud and full-bodied; and the speaker led you to expect that you'd get what you expected. But at precisely those moments, you did not get it! The ultimate audio tease." It's not mis-design at all - it's very good design. It preserves what it can given the limits of physics, and to do that you can bet KLH measured the HELL out of things. What idiocy. "Here's how musical damage was narrowly averted in one recording: I helped out on a recording of the Kodo drummers from Japan. Their dynamic range is enormous. At our mike position 30 feet from the loudest drums, we tried three different mikes. First was a condenser with a one-inch diaphragm. At the loudest moments, the diaphragm hit the stops thup thup thup: unusable. Second was a five-eighths-inch condenser; the diaphragm didn't hit anything, but the character of the sound changed a lot between soft and loud passages. We were nervous. The third mike was a ribbon; and fortunately for us, it sailed through everything with no change of character" Once again, did Boyk ever look at the specs for the mikes in question? Doesn't he think such obvious distortions can be measured? Boyk actually says a few interesting things, but, for me it's all outweighed by the patronizing tone, the false dichotomies, the caricatures and the morass of soggy opinion. Ick. Bob T. Chelvam wrote: The above subject is actually a seminar given by James Boyk. I did a quick search on google to see whether it has been discussed here on RAHE but could not find one. (bunch of quotes from the following snipped out -- bt) More at http://www.performancerecordings.com...ing-music.html |
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#3
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Chelvam wrote:
The above subject is actually a seminar given by James Boyk. I did a quick search on google to see whether it has been discussed here on RAHE but could not find one. Some interesting excerpts:- " The design engineer who creates a piece of audio equipment, the recording engineer who uses it at a concert, and the performer who plays the concert have something in common: For all three of them, the only way to judge success is by listening. For the musician and the recording engineer, this is the natural order of things; but design engineers want something to measure. Unfortunately, no measurement is known generally to predict sound quality, though there's one that's promising. Perhaps you'll be interested in testing it further-modifying it if need be-if I can inspire you with interest in audio" I have never come across a situation, when flaws in recordings wouldn't show up on some measurements. Either the frequency response, pulse response or a distortion measurement would reveal an "electronic" problem. Of course you can also spot it just listening attentivly if it is happening, but with a measurement you have a numeric figure which helps you spot the part of the circuit which is misbehaving. In many cases you can find some sub-standard response *without* being able to hear it though, so I would say just the opposite is true. snip anecdotes "...And they stunned us with their awful sound. They got great figures by having gobs of global feedback; but most of them were so slow they had slewing problems on transients; so musical attacks suffered. If you told the designer what you heard, you were dismissed as an enemy of progress and told you didn't know what accurate sound was. "I'm a pianist," I said, "and that ain't the sound of a piano!" I was informed that I was used to the "euphonic colorations" of vacuum tubes. " This is the typical situation when an alleged problem is "audible". If you have feedback in mind, the amp is "slow", when you have digital in mind it gets "grainy" or has "steps". These evaluations are mostly imagined, because the actual hearing experience doesn't sound like this. It is pure imagination, projected from the mind. More at http://www.performancerecordings.com...ing-music.html This is another Quack who wants to sell his completely overpriced mikes. These are unusable, because of "flanging" effect due to the large distance between the two small electret capsules. The production cost is shurely below 20 bucks. Just look at that flipsy cable with the 3.5mm jack, awful. -- ciao Ban Bordighera, Italy |
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#4
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"Robert Trosper" wrote in message
... It's not necessarily true that "false in one is false in all" but Boyk's admiration for this particular bit of dreck is worrisome. snip..snip.. Is Boyk seriously suggesting that one can't measure when amplifiers clip? Or when speaker cones hit their limits? snip..snip.. Fair criticism, though you have added nothing new that Boyk haven't heard already. To be fair to him and to the benefit of RAHE, may I forward your posting to Mr Boyk for his clarification? It may be worthwhile to consider that he was giving a speech at a University on the invitation of a Prof and in the presence people like W Jung, Louis Fielder, Doug Sax and John Atkinson AND undergraduates who would have been more critical then you could imagine. BTW, here's an article on Doug Sax http://www.airshowmastering.com/newsimg/1.pdf and checkout the profile of Shayan Mookherjea's and others. What are they still searching for? What are we doing in RAHE. The objective is high end sound. It doesn't matter how that is achieved. Valve or Solid State or LP or CD or DVD-A or SACD, I don't care as long as I hear what I think is the right sound. |
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#5
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"Mike Prager" wrote in message
... Chelvam wrote: The above subject is actually a seminar given by James Boyk. I did a quick search on google to see whether it has been discussed here on RAHE but could not find one. Some interesting excerpts:- [...] Thank you for posting this. It's always interesting to hear the perspectives of musicians on sound reproduction. You are welcome. Good to see appreciation instead of critisism. so far , only few posts actually help us to understand High End. Or how to have great sound. In fact, I have a few but putting them on RAHE would be an open invitation for an avalance of engineering lectures. |
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#6
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"Robert Trosper" wrote in message
... It's not necessarily true that "false in one is false in all" but Boyk's admiration for this particular bit of dreck is worrisome. " I'm eager to see whether the test would correlate with specific subtle aspects of performance. For example, my friend Doug Sax, a recording and mastering engineer, tested two line amps himself by a clever method to learn about their performance with very soft signals. He had someone talk at one end of a studio; and put a microphone at the other end, 90 feet away. The output of the mike ran to a power amp and speakers, and he could hear and understand the speech over the speakers. In the cable between the mike and the power amp was a switch. When turned to its other position, it inserted a line amp between the mike and the power amp. The line amp's volume control was adjusted so the volume didn't change. If the line amp were perfect, adding it to the chain wouldn't change anything. And that's what happened with one of the line amps, a unit Sax had used for years, and which he liked. Then he substituted a different line amp, which had better THD and noise specs than the first. When it was switched in, he tells me, the spoken words became unintelligible. To be sure, they were very soft, but lots of things in music are soft, like the dying away of reverberation." All this tells ME is that Doug had become VERY familiar with the way speech sounds through one device and wasn't familiar with the other. BOTH could have been distorted horribly. An extreme example of this are people who get used to the way cerebral palsy victims speak and can then interpret for others. Just because they understand one impaired speaker doesn't mean they could understand another. (NOTE - this was an extreme example - don't get too carried away with any analogy). And another "Such listeners would be useful to audio designers. But in general, designers and manufacturers don't ‘get' it about listening. This is why most gear isn't very good. One fellow who makes very expensive speakers seemed to be bragging that he doesn't listen to his own designs. (He also claimed to be a music lover, but didn't know the make of piano in his own home!) [Audience: Laughter.]" I don't know the make of the piano in my home either, inherited as it was, but I do love music. What does one have to do with the other? And another "Here's how a playback system damaged my Beethoven. When my first album came out, I sent a copy to a young pianist friend at a conservatory. She wrote back very embarrassed, saying that the first movement of my Beethoven had too many climaxes, and my tone was "bangy." This was crushing. When summer came, she wrote again. At home for vacation, she had listened to the album on her father's system, much better than her own dorm-room player. Now she did not hear the extra climaxes or the banging, and she loved the performance. In a flash, I realized what had been wrong. The recording has a wide dynamic range. When the music got loud enough, it had overloaded her dorm system. Any such passage came out equal in loudness to any other such passage; hence, multiple climaxes. They were graded dynamically in the playing and on the recording, but couldn't be distinguished by the system. Overloading also makes the reproduced tone ugly; but because she was thinking in musical terms, she heard the ugliness created by her system as though it were created at the piano! ( Stereophile magazine ranked this album a "Record to Die For." )" Is Boyk seriously suggesting that one can't measure when amplifiers clip? Or when speaker cones hit their limits? "Here's how a common problem in playback systems could damage Schubert: In the posthumous A-major sonata, the bass comes in groups of four sequential notes, with the first of each group holding through the remaining three. ( Note 13 http://www.performancerecordings.com/capturing-music.html#note13 ) But for two groups, it's not held. This contrast in texture means something to Schubert, but if there were a resonance in the audio system on either of these unheld notes, or a broad resonance in the general area of their pitch—as many cheap loudspeakers do have—these notes might seem to be held when they're not; and the textural contrast would be damaged." Resonances are routinely measured and damped - a spectrum analyzer can help a lot too. "Here's how mis-design of a playback component can frustrate the listener: The KLH company made a small two-way speaker that came with a box to connect between your preamp and power amp. After calibration, when you played soft music, the speaker would go down much deeper in the bass than you would expect from its tiny woofer. As the music got louder, if the low frequencies were still present, the box reduced them electronically to prevent the woofer cone traveling too far and damaging itself. You could play the speaker as loud as you like, and it would always give you the most bass consistent with its own safety. This was clever; but consider its musical impact. At climaxes, things tend to be loud and full-bodied; and the speaker led you to expect that you'd get what you expected. But at precisely those moments, you did not get it! The ultimate audio tease." It's not mis-design at all - it's very good design. It preserves what it can given the limits of physics, and to do that you can bet KLH measured the HELL out of things. What idiocy. "Here's how musical damage was narrowly averted in one recording: I helped out on a recording of the Kodo drummers from Japan. Their dynamic range is enormous. At our mike position 30 feet from the loudest drums, we tried three different mikes. First was a condenser with a one-inch diaphragm. At the loudest moments, the diaphragm hit the stops thup thup thup: unusable. Second was a five-eighths-inch condenser; the diaphragm didn't hit anything, but the character of the sound changed a lot between soft and loud passages. We were nervous. The third mike was a ribbon; and fortunately for us, it sailed through everything with no change of character" Once again, did Boyk ever look at the specs for the mikes in question? Doesn't he think such obvious distortions can be measured? Boyk actually says a few interesting things, but, for me it's all outweighed by the patronizing tone, the false dichotomies, the caricatures and the morass of soggy opinion. Ick. Bob T. It is your own disparagement of Boyk's talk that I find disturbing. This is a seminar given by a pianist as guest lecturer to a bunch of ee students, who are not audio specialists or professionals or even ee's. As such he is simply and entertainingly trying to give them a general education on all the things that can happen in trying to record and reproduce music. I suggest if you think it could be done better, you write Boyk and start a correspondence. But to belittle him here as if he were preaching to a bunch of experience audio designer ee's is just showboating, IMO. Chelvam wrote: The above subject is actually a seminar given by James Boyk. I did a quick search on google to see whether it has been discussed here on RAHE but could not find one. (bunch of quotes from the following snipped out -- bt) More at http://www.performancerecordings.com...ing-music.html |
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#7
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On 26 Aug 2004 23:30:20 GMT, "Harry Lavo" wrote:
"Robert Trosper" wrote in message ... Boyk actually says a few interesting things, but, for me it's all outweighed by the patronizing tone, the false dichotomies, the caricatures and the morass of soggy opinion. Ick. Bob T. It is your own disparagement of Boyk's talk that I find disturbing. This is a seminar given by a pianist as guest lecturer to a bunch of ee students, who are not audio specialists or professionals or even ee's. As such he is simply and entertainingly trying to give them a general education on all the things that can happen in trying to record and reproduce music. This is a very false picture. Boyk is not employed by Cal Tech as 'a pianist'. To be sure, he is Pianist in Residence, but he also teaches courses in the combining of engineering and music. While we might indeed agree that he has no technical credentials, it is nonetheless ingenuous to suggest that he is a poor innocent musician who has been dragged along to talk to a bunch of engineering types. I suggest if you think it could be done better, you write Boyk and start a correspondence. But to belittle him here as if he were preaching to a bunch of experience audio designer ee's is just showboating, IMO. Unfortunately, Bob hit it right on the head. Boyk, who is a talented musician and a good recording engineer, does indeed love the sound of his own voice, and tends to stray into lecturing in areas for which he is totally unqualified, as should be obvious from reading that transcript. Any I *have* attempted correspondence with Boyk on this matter, which resulted in him throwing a hissy fit and abandoning the field. -- Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering |
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#8
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"Ban" wrote in message
... snip...snip... This is another Quack who wants to sell his completely overpriced mikes. These are unusable, because of "flanging" effect due to the large distance between the two small electret capsules. He never claimed that they are ideal mic. in fact he said " intended for practice, rehearsal and lessons, NOT FOR STUDIO QUALITY RECORDING..". He only claims that the mike requires no PreAmp and No need for stand, boom or shock mount. Yet it hears you well, even from a distance. So why the unfair critisism? The production cost is shurely below 20 bucks. Just look at that flipsy cable with the 3.5mm jack, awful. And the cost of his pr6cd is about $1 but he is selling at $30 so how do you justify that? |
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#9
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"Ban" wrote in message ...
More at http://www.performancerecordings.com...ing-music.html This is another Quack who wants to sell his completely overpriced mikes. These are unusable, because of "flanging" effect due to the large distance between the two small electret capsules. The distance between capsules has to be less than 10" if the published dimensions of the mic housing are correct, & they appear to be even closer, probably 7" ...just like the capsule spacing for an ORTF array. Ever hear an ORTF recording? Or a Dutch NOS recording? Or any of the many recordings made with a Decca Tree mic array, where the capsules are often more than 1m apart? The only "flanging" (or comb filtering) evident in recordings made with spaced microphones occurs when the stereo channels are summed to mono (or when the performers are moving). Interaural Time Delays are one of the key components of how we hear stereo, and the most basic way to capture these cues is via spaced microphone capsules. The production cost is shurely below 20 bucks. Just look at that flipsy cable with the 3.5mm jack, awful. I will agree with you on this point! |
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#10
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Robert Trosper wrote in message ...
All this tells ME is that Doug had become VERY familiar with the way speech sounds through one device and wasn't familiar with the other. Perhaps, but it still doesn't change his point that better specs for one box doesn't necessarily lead to better audible results. Is Boyk seriously suggesting that one can't measure when amplifiers clip? Or when speaker cones hit their limits? I thought that section was about the musical consequences of bad audio design, not examples of things that can't be measured? Resonances are routinely measured and damped - a spectrum analyzer can help a lot too. Yes, but in the cheap speakers he was talking about? It's not mis-design at all - it's very good design. It preserves what it can given the limits of physics, and to do that you can bet KLH measured the HELL out of things. What idiocy. It depends on how you define good design. You seem to define it as something that protects the speaker. He seems to define it as something that doesn't distort the music that's being played back. Speaker design is an exercise in compromise, and there are certainly many valid ways of designing a speaker. Perhaps this is a reflection of the dichotomy of design philosophies he mentions. Once again, did Boyk ever look at the specs for the mikes in question? Doesn't he think such obvious distortions can be measured? What is the SPL output of a large Kodo drum at 30 feet in that room? It's easier at times to just listen and see if something's OK than to go through more involved measurements and calculations. Recording on-site requires efficiency. Boyk actually says a few interesting things, but, for me it's all outweighed by the patronizing tone, the false dichotomies, the caricatures and the morass of soggy opinion. Ick. I'm sorry you feel that way. I was one of James Boyk's students, and to this day, what I learned in his class continues to influence how I approach audio, as well as my professional life (engineering). He may have strongly held opinions and views, but he was always intellectually generous, curious, and open-minded with his students, encouraging us to find things out for ourselves, and to decide for ourselves, based on good empirical evidence, what was what. --Andre |
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#11
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Harry Lavo wrote:
(LOTS of my own stuff snipped. I hate really long posts where nobody removed the irrelevancies. I, at least used to reject stuff and ask the author to edit. Oh, well. BT) Boyk actually says a few interesting things, but, for me it's all outweighed by the patronizing tone, the false dichotomies, the caricatures and the morass of soggy opinion. Ick. Bob T. It is your own disparagement of Boyk's talk that I find disturbing. This is a seminar given by a pianist as guest lecturer to a bunch of ee students, who are not audio specialists or professionals or even ee's. As such he is simply and entertainingly trying to give them a general education on all the things that can happen in trying to record and reproduce music. I suggest if you think it could be done better, you write Boyk and start a correspondence. But to belittle him here as if he were preaching to a bunch of experience audio designer ee's is just showboating, IMO. If I'd been in the audience, I'd have talked to Boyk. I didn't post the pointer or do the original quotes, but this seems an appropriate forum to respond to them in. My assumption (possibly wrong) is that the original poster thought Boyk's talk was good stuff. It's not. It's ESPECIALLY not for beginning EE's. An experienced one would know how much of it was just silly. A beginning one might spend valuable brain cycles worrying through the wooly thinking instead of learning to solve real (and measurable) problems. I am NOT saying that listening experience can be PREDICTED from measurement in every case. That would also be silly. I am saying that the examples Boyk gives are pretty worthless, tendentious in their own right and unlikely to lead to better design or implementation. I post here because it's uncritical acceptance of Boyk's assertions that lead to the separation of so much cash from so many wallets, and prevent the worthwhile activity of identifying, reliably and consistently through measurement, what it is that's causing the sounds we hear and then altering the design to do something else, if that's what's wanted. If it's "showboating" to poke holes in dreck, then let's hear it for the showboaters. -- Bob T. |
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#12
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Stewart Pinkerton wrote:
This is a very false picture. Boyk is not employed by Cal Tech as 'a pianist'. Actually, he is no longer employed by Cal Tech at all. His contract was not renewed this spring. bob __________________________________________________ _______________ Don’t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/o...ave/direct/01/ |
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#13
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Andre Yew wrote:
(I've relocated this last part to the first to try to avoid some kinds=20 of responses - Bob T.) =20 =20 Boyk actually says a few interesting things, but, for me it's all=20 outweighed by the patronizing tone, the false dichotomies, the=20 caricatures and the morass of soggy opinion. Ick. =20 I'm sorry you feel that way. I was one of James Boyk's students, and to this day, what I learned in his class continues to influence how I approach audio, as well as my professional life (engineering). He may have strongly held opinions and views, but he was always intellectually generous, curious, and open-minded with his students, encouraging us to find things out for ourselves, and to decide for ourselves, based on good empirical evidence, what was what. Whatever he said in class, and whatever effect it had on you is in a=20 parallel universe to this discussion. The article does not, in my=20 opinion, contain much besides the strongly held views and opinions. I=20 have no opinion on his behavior, character, shoe size or preference in=20 foods outside of the article. I will say that I could have qualified my=20 statement further to make it clear that my opinion is based ON THIS ARTIC= LE. Robert Trosper wrote in message news:cgj7m201ha2@n= ews4.newsguy.com... =20 All this tells ME is that Doug had become VERY familiar with the way=20 speech sounds through one device and wasn't familiar with the other.=20 =20 Perhaps, but it still doesn't change his point that better specs for one box doesn't necessarily lead to better audible results. It doesn't change his point or mine. My point is that the effect of=20 familiarity swamps the change in specification. Your point is different=20 and also valid. I'm assuming you're allowing the converse that "worse"=20 specs for one box don't necessarily lead to worse (or even different)=20 audible results. Say we change the 3dB down point from 2.4 GHz to 2.2=20 GHz. Audible? =20 Is Boyk seriously suggesting that one can't measure when amplifiers=20 clip? Or when speaker cones hit their limits? =20 I thought that section was about the musical consequences of bad audio design, not examples of things that can't be measured? It's possible that, in my ire, I read more into that one than was=20 intended. My apologies. =20 Resonances are routinely measured and damped - a spectrum analyzer can = help a lot too. =20 Yes, but in the cheap speakers he was talking about? Not having the cheap speakers in hand, I can't say definitively. I do=20 know that many cheap speakers use materials with low resonance (MDF) for = that reason, and that applying asphalt is cheap. =20 It's not mis-design at all - it's very good design. It preserves what i= t=20 can given the limits of physics, and to do that you can bet KLH measure= d=20 the HELL out of things. What idiocy. =20 It depends on how you define good design. You seem to define it as something that protects the speaker. He seems to define it as something that doesn't distort the music that's being played back.=20 Speaker design is an exercise in compromise, and there are certainly many valid ways of designing a speaker. Perhaps this is a reflection of the dichotomy of design philosophies he mentions. What he said is (and the ellipsis is mine), "Here's how mis-design of a=20 playback component can frustrate the listener ... At climaxes, things=20 tend to be loud and full-bodied; and the speaker led you to expect that=20 you'd get what you expected. But at precisely those moments, you did not = get it! The ultimate audio tease." What he seems to be saying is that it somehow worse to do the good that o= ne can to a price point than not to do anything at all! Either buy good, = and more expensive speakers, or suffer. Audio asceticism is certainly a v= alue one can hold, but on the issue of musicality, it seems to me to be M= ORE musical to preserve the experience until one can't than not to preser= ve it all all. Over the range before it reaches its limits the design doe= sn't disappoint the listener at all. I don't think it's a reasonable desi= gn goal to avoid disappointing the expectations of the uninformed at the = expense of providing all the music one can. I've read any number of inter= views with musicians who have "horrible" systems that the music they hear= is so divorced from what's being reproduced that such a disappointment d= oesn't even exist. There is a case to be made (and this should probably b= e a whole other thread) that many of us were happier listening to the mus= ic before we started listening to the sound. Once again, did Boyk ever look at the specs for the mikes in question? = Doesn't he think such obvious distortions can be measured? =20 What is the SPL output of a large Kodo drum at 30 feet in that room?=20 It's easier at times to just listen and see if something's OK than to go through more involved measurements and calculations. Recording on-site requires efficiency. What he said was ""Here's how musical damage was narrowly averted in one = recording: I helped out on a recording of the Kodo drummers from Japan...= =2E" I don't retract what I said, but I didn't say enough. Noticing the=20 distortion of an overdriven mike is not averting something narrowly. To=20 go well past absurdity, it's like saying, "Here's how one storage=20 disaster was narrowly avoided. We had five gallons of cottage cheese to=20 store. We tried pouring the cheese into a paper sack, but noticed=20 unacceptable leakage immediately. We then tried a stouter cloth bag and=20 it got damp after an hour. Fortunately, one of the crew had a plastic=20 bag and the day was saved!" Yes, it's important to listen. Yes, it's=20 important to notice distortion. The choice of words leads me to believe = that it was James Boyk, and only James Boyk who could have heard the=20 distortion or noticed the bag was leaking. The story would have made=20 more sense to me if someone was just going ahead without listening to=20 the playback at all, or had MISSED the less obvious distortion, and if=20 something useful had been said about what to listen for. -- Bob T. |
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#14
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#15
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"Chelvam" wrote in message ...
More at http://www.performancerecordings.com...ing-music.html For me, the take-home message of this page was: Musicians can hear things which are the audible effect of badly designed equipment, improper usage, or the recording engineer being asleep at the console. I suppose this is another way of saying that audible things are... audible. There are doubtlessly many cases where the ears are useful, just because we can recognize familiar noises and patterns. When I was in the studio a few weeks ago, I was able to recognize both clipping distortion and the effect of a damaged cable or connector. Both problems were quickly fixed. Characterizing engineers as being hostile to listening tests is too much of a generalization. For one thing, a lot of engineers are also musicians, including me. The author states that blind testing is not universally applicable, but does not give a counter-example where an audible effect is not amenable to blind testing. |
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"Andre Yew" wrote in message
... snip...snip.. I'm sorry you feel that way. I was one of James Boyk's students, and to this day, what I learned in his class continues to influence how I approach audio, as well as my professional life (engineering). He may have strongly held opinions and views, but he was always intellectually generous, curious, and open-minded with his students, encouraging us to find things out for ourselves, and to decide for ourselves, based on good empirical evidence, what was what. We would be interested to know your preference and opinion. |
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From: Stewart Pinkerton
Date: 8/29/2004 7:23 AM Pacific Standard Time Message-id: On 28 Aug 2004 14:54:29 GMT, (S888Wheel) wrote: From: Stewart Pinkerton Date: 8/27/2004 12:16 PM Pacific Standard Time Message-id: On 26 Aug 2004 23:30:20 GMT, "Harry Lavo" wrote: "Robert Trosper" wrote in message ... Boyk actually says a few interesting things, but, for me it's all outweighed by the patronizing tone, the false dichotomies, the caricatures and the morass of soggy opinion. Ick. Bob T. It is your own disparagement of Boyk's talk that I find disturbing. This is a seminar given by a pianist as guest lecturer to a bunch of ee students, who are not audio specialists or professionals or even ee's. As such he is simply and entertainingly trying to give them a general education on all the things that can happen in trying to record and reproduce music. This is a very false picture. Boyk is not employed by Cal Tech as 'a pianist'. To be sure, he is Pianist in Residence, He is no longer Pianist in residence at Cal Tech. Indeed not - nor is he anything else at Cal Tech, apparently. That is not what I see on his website. He anounced that his tenure as pianist in residence has come to an end. He does not say anything about not teaching at Cal Tech any longer. Here is the first line of his website.James Boyk Pianist in Residence, April 1974 - June 2004. Lecturer in Music in Electrical Engineering Director of the Music Lab California Institute of Technology but he also teaches courses in the combining of engineering and music. The class he teaches is titled "Projects in Music & Science" That would be 'taught', no? I'd say no until I hear otherwise. While we might indeed agree that he has no technical credentials, The two of you might agree but obviously the administration at Cal Tech, arguably one of the best schools in the world in science, does not agree. I doubt they would have anyone teach a class titled "Projects in music and *science*" if they thought he lacked the "credentials" to do so. Nonetheless, they did. Boyk has no engineering (or science) credentials whatever. Electronic Construction, Mho Engineering, Toledo, 1962. Electronic Design and Construction, Ottawa Chemical Co., Toledo, 1961. I would be prone to give the administration at Cal Tech the edge on this opinion. They know Boyk better than you and they know science better than you. So that's why they didn't renew his contract this year? Maybe they didn't want to fund a pianist in residence any longer. It was a student government decision I believe. That decision obviously has no bearing on Cal Tech's administrative decision to have him teach a science class. A class that he has taught for 25 years. if he were as incompeent as you claim you'd think the folk at Cal Tech would have caught on by now don't you? Here are some comments by his students on that his class. Comments Received in 2002 "Exactly the kind of thing I came to Caltech for ... my most memorable, unique class. €”Ben Brantley '00. (TA in 107.) By far my favorite and most memorable course at Caltech... I would rank EE/Mu 107 among the top of all my Caltech courses, along with CS91 and the EE5x series taught by Glenn George. €”David Barksdale '96 BS E&AS. (TA in 107. Projects: Class A headphone amp, Class AB high-bias-current minimal-global-feedback power amplifier.) A perfect blend of engineering and science.... Best class I took at Caltech. €”Bruce Miller '89 BSEE. (Project: Stereo miking demo CD.) Taught me how to approach engineering like science.... filled in many of the gaps left in the more "mainstream" classes while still being a lot of fun. €”Ken Walsh '96 BSEE, MS'97. (Project: Very high speed linear phase D/A.) EE/Mu 107 provided a great opportunity to apply the theoretical knowledge I gained as a Caltech student to practical problems.... As a working engineer, I find that practical experience and good instincts are often as important as theoretical background. EE/Mu 107 is one the relatively few courses at Caltech that can provide that practical background.... One of the most enjoyable and interesting of all my courses. €”Chris Ulmer '93 BS/EE 1993, MS/EE 1994. (Project: Software to implement a spectrum analyzer that could display spectral change of sounds.) I liked the freedom to design a unique project and execute it, learning what works and what doesn't through direct experience.... I'm now glad that I was required to listen to live, un-amplified music on a regular basis. €”Victor Chan '89 BSEE. (Project: Enclosures for 24" woofers). By far the best course I took (and TA'ed for) at Caltech. Its blend of music appreciation, writing refinement, audio technology, and practical experimentation involving both material and human resources, is probably unrivaled anywhere in academia. This is a course that deserves far more recognition than it receives, and is perhaps Caltech's strongest and most unique offering. €”Mark Neidengard '97, BS Computer Science; MS 1998. (Ph.D., Cornell University.) (TA in 107. Project: Two-term investigation of the perceptual accuracy of the MPEG audio codec, culminating in blind comparison testing using Caltech students.) The personal attention all students received in this course, added to the encouragement to explore areas we were truly interested in, was an unusual experience for me as a student at Caltech. Learning how to work on long-term projects has...been a great help. As I was not exposed to any other engineering courses while at Caltech, EE/Mu 107 provided a way for me to learn about engineering by combining it with one of my life passions (music). As evidenced by the fact that I took the class for four terms, I rank the class very highly. €”Brigitte Roth '99, BS Economics. (Projects: Electric guitar. Science of the voice.). [O]ne of my fondest memories and most valuable experiences [at] Caltech. I learned to listen carefully to what I hear...learned an approach to writing that I had never encountered before...learned that there is always more to learn. If Mr. Boyk's teachings could be summarized in three words, they would be: 'Relentlessly pursue excellence.' €”Glenn M. Lewis '88 BSEE, MSCS '90. (Project: Infrared audio link.) It would not be an exaggeration to say that it has given me a more profound sense of the world, for it certainly opened up my ears and my mind. €”Eileen Lau '96, BSc Electrical Engineering. Far and away the most "real" [course] in that it didn't revolve around contrived problem sets and scripted experiments that had been done hundreds of times before. The only class... that required me (through field trips) to get off campus and interact with real people doing real work in related fields. The practical training in technical writing, experimental procedure...and construction of projects have all been beneficial in varying degrees. I've written about a dozen technical descriptions of services my company provides, and the writing training from EE/Mu107 has proven invaluable. The writing training has also helped me take on managerial responsibilities as my company has grown. €”Steven Ginzburg '98 Computer Science. (Projects: Winter 1996: Used polygraph to measure subjects' physiological response to various pieces of music. Spring 1996: Built and listened to the Nelson Pass "Zen" amp.) "The best course I've taken." €”Adam Urbach '97. I took EE/MU107abc as part of the inaugural class [1979-80].... I am now the Director of R&D for J. D'Addario & Company, the world's largest manufacturer of musical strings. I spend a lot of time evaluating the way our products affect the production of sound. I am often asked to develop objective measurements that correlate well with what we hear, or asked to substantiate (or refute) claims of sonic superiority of technologies or products. The training I received in EE/MU107 has been invaluable for this type of work. Mr. Boyk's emphasis on the importance of clear and concise writing was unique in my education and a major positive influence.... I think that every Caltech student would benefit from taking his course as a writing requirement! EE/MU 107 was one of the three most valuable, influential, and enjoyable courses or experiences at Caltech (along with Olaf Frodsham's Glee Club and Prof. Middlebrooks' EE114). I wish I could take this course as a refresher every year! €”Fan-Chia Tao '81 BSEE. (107 projects: Decoder for rear/side speakers. Experimental test of theories in "The Language of Music," by Deryck Cooke.) I learned some basic signal processing theory and some electronics. "Raw" information, so to speak. Then I learned less tangible things. What do I like about the music that appeals to me? What aspects of this can audio systems reproduce sucessfully? What aspects don't seem to make it through to the far side of an audio reproduction chain? And then, how do I evaluate an audio system? Do I make up my mind instantly, or do I sit with it for a while? What kinds of details can I listen for? What would it mean to defocus from the details and take in the gestalt? How useful is theory in predicting the performance of an audio system? Are the good audio systems exactly the same as the audio systems that measure well, or do these categories merely overlap? As the teacher, [James Boyk] convey[s] great enthusiasm, something I only got from a handful of Caltech profs. €”Mike Mossey '91 BS, E&AS. (107 projects: Loudspeaker and cabinet design. See photos on Music Lab home page.) Comments Received in 1988 "More real laboratory science went on in that class than in any other I took in my Caltech career." €”Bruce J. Sams III '83. (Ph.D. Astrophysics, Harvard; Max Planck Institute) "The highest standards of scientific honesty and thoroughness were demanded.... Supremely valuable." €”Denes Zsolnay '84. "Valuable in that it was the experimental class in which things were the least clear cut. In [other courses] the experiments were completely cut and dried." €”David Hull '85. "The theory of double-blind testing was not presented in any other course I took at Caltech." €”William Snyder '82. (Later chief engineer, Krell Electronics, makers of Class A audio amps.) "EE/Mu 107 is of international importance... I instituted a third-year Option course in €˜Audio' which follows [its] example..." €”Prof. Peter B. Fellgett FRS; Head, Dept. of Cybernetics, University of Reading (England); co-patentee of Ambisonics and the Soundfield microphone. "One of the most valuable courses at Caltech." €”Caltech Prof. F. Brock Fuller, Mathematics "Unique perspective on the art of engineering.... Made clear to me that instrumentation is merely a tool.... Excellent input on technical writing style." €”Rick Walker '82. (Hewlett-Packard/Agilent; holder or co-holder of 13 patents) Looks like a lot of students at one of the world's best science schools have a pretty positive opinion of Boyk and his class. But what do they know? They are only world class science students from Cal Tech. Unfortunately, Bob hit it right on the head. Boyk, who is a talented musician and a good recording engineer, Hmmm. IMO he is a good pianist and a talented recording engineer. His recordings are amoung the best I have ever heard, his performances are not amoung the best I have ever heard. OK, he's a better pianist than I am, which makes him talented, as opposed to me, as I am an untalented pianist! I guess it comes down to your ranking of those terms. :-) I was just offering my take on his abilities. Talent is, as you point out, a relative term. does indeed love the sound of his own voice, and tends to stray into lecturing in areas for which he is totally unqualified, as should be obvious from reading that transcript. Shouldn't the administration at Cal Tech be alerted? It would seem that they have been, as I understand that his contract was not renewed this year. I'm not sure that is true but if it is true 25 years is quite run for any teacher. I'df think people as bright as those found on the Cal Tech administration would have caught on sooner than 25 years and I would expect students as knowledgable in science wouldn't have such a positive opinion on such an obviously incompetent teacher. How did Boyk pull the wool over everyone's eyes there at Cal Tech? Any I *have* attempted correspondence with Boyk on this matter, which resulted in him throwing a hissy fit and abandoning the field. That is your side of it. Indeed so. Perhaps Boyk might care to rebut in this forum? He used to do that. It seems he got tired of RAHE. -- Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering |
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#19
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On 29 Aug 2004 15:52:05 GMT, (S888Wheel) wrote:
From: Stewart Pinkerton Date: 8/29/2004 7:23 AM Pacific Standard Time Message-id: On 28 Aug 2004 14:54:29 GMT, (S888Wheel) wrote: From: Stewart Pinkerton Date: 8/27/2004 12:16 PM Pacific Standard Time Message-id: On 26 Aug 2004 23:30:20 GMT, "Harry Lavo" wrote: "Robert Trosper" wrote in message ... Boyk actually says a few interesting things, but, for me it's all outweighed by the patronizing tone, the false dichotomies, the caricatures and the morass of soggy opinion. Ick. Bob T. It is your own disparagement of Boyk's talk that I find disturbing. This is a seminar given by a pianist as guest lecturer to a bunch of ee students, who are not audio specialists or professionals or even ee's. As such he is simply and entertainingly trying to give them a general education on all the things that can happen in trying to record and reproduce music. This is a very false picture. Boyk is not employed by Cal Tech as 'a pianist'. To be sure, he is Pianist in Residence, He is no longer Pianist in residence at Cal Tech. Indeed not - nor is he anything else at Cal Tech, apparently. That is not what I see on his website. He anounced that his tenure as pianist in residence has come to an end. He does not say anything about not teaching at Cal Tech any longer. Here is the first line of his website.James Boyk Pianist in Residence, April 1974 - June 2004. Lecturer in Music in Electrical Engineering Director of the Music Lab California Institute of Technology Note that in his own CV, he quotes *no* connection with Cal Tech post June 2004. Basically, he's gone.................... but he also teaches courses in the combining of engineering and music. The class he teaches is titled "Projects in Music & Science" That would be 'taught', no? I'd say no until I hear otherwise. Interesting that you can't actually quote anything - even from Boyk's own self-promotional website - that suggests that he has now *any* connection with Cal Tech........ While we might indeed agree that he has no technical credentials, The two of you might agree but obviously the administration at Cal Tech, arguably one of the best schools in the world in science, does not agree. I doubt they would have anyone teach a class titled "Projects in music and *science*" if they thought he lacked the "credentials" to do so. Nonetheless, they did. Boyk has no engineering (or science) credentials whatever. Electronic Construction, Mho Engineering, Toledo, 1962. Electronic Design and Construction, Ottawa Chemical Co., Toledo, 1961. You call those 'engineering credentials'? I would be prone to give the administration at Cal Tech the edge on this opinion. They know Boyk better than you and they know science better than you. So that's why they didn't renew his contract this year? Maybe they didn't want to fund a pianist in residence any longer. It was a student government decision I believe. That decision obviously has no bearing on Cal Tech's administrative decision to have him teach a science class. He also no longer teaches a science class, or any other class..... class that he has taught for 25 years. if he were as incompeent as you claim you'd think the folk at Cal Tech would have caught on by now don't you? Here are some comments by his students on that his class. snip self-gratification culled from Boyk's own website Doesn't that in itself tell you useful things about the guy? Just go *read* his own website for some insight. Now, try to find any *real* engineer who is so insecure that he feels the need to puff himself up like that....................... Any I *have* attempted correspondence with Boyk on this matter, which resulted in him throwing a hissy fit and abandoning the field. That is your side of it. Indeed so. Perhaps Boyk might care to rebut in this forum? He used to do that. It seems he got tired of RAHE. I wonder why? In r.a.h-e, you can't just puff yourself up based on academic tenure, you actually have to provide cogent arguments for your beliefs and assertions. Boyk came here and got his fingers burned. Please note that I cast no aspersions upon his abilities either as a pianist or as a recording enginneer, I simply object to his spouting unscientific rubbish at a fine engineering institution. Luckily, that seems to have been terminated. -- Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering |
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#20
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A clarification:
Bob Marcus wrote: Stewart Pinkerton wrote: This is a very false picture. Boyk is not employed by Cal Tech as 'a pianist'. Actually, he is no longer employed by Cal Tech at all. His contract was not renewed this spring. The contract that wasn't renewed was for his post as "pianist in residence" (by the dept . of student affairs, not the "student government"). But the 2004-05 online catalog still lists him as professor of "Projects in Music and Science," a course jointly offered by the depts. of electrical engineering, computer science, and music. Course catalogs often miss last-minute changes, however, so this isn't definitive proof that he still teaches at Cal Tech, either. Boyk's technical background includes an undergraduate degree in mathematics and a good bit of apparently relevant work experience in the electronics and related industries. It's not unusual for a college, even one as prestigious as Cal Tech, to employ adjunct faculty with on-the-job experience, rather than formal training. So I don't think it's fair to say, on the basis of his resume, that he is unqualified to teach what he's been teaching at Cal Tech. As for his heretical beliefs, they appear to be concentrated on the perceptual psychology side of things. In my (few) exchanges with him, he seemed to take the position that he is an expert listener, and therefore we should just accept it when he says he can hear differences that don't show up in blind tests. His technical papers talk about things that "might" be audible (e.g., subtle forms of distortion, ultrasonic harmonics), but I see no evidence that he's tested those suppositions in a controlled manner. I don’t get the sense that these are central issues in his course, however, so it just might be that his students were/are getting a reasonably good education, even if the prof does have a few off-the-wall beliefs. bob __________________________________________________ _______________ FREE pop-up blocking with the new MSN Toolbar – get it now! http://toolbar.msn.click-url.com/go/...ave/direct/01/ |
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From: Stewart Pinkerton
Date: 8/29/2004 2:04 PM Pacific Standard Time Message-id: On 29 Aug 2004 15:52:05 GMT, (S888Wheel) wrote: From: Stewart Pinkerton Date: 8/29/2004 7:23 AM Pacific Standard Time Message-id: On 28 Aug 2004 14:54:29 GMT, (S888Wheel) wrote: From: Stewart Pinkerton Date: 8/27/2004 12:16 PM Pacific Standard Time Message-id: On 26 Aug 2004 23:30:20 GMT, "Harry Lavo" wrote: "Robert Trosper" wrote in message ... Boyk actually says a few interesting things, but, for me it's all outweighed by the patronizing tone, the false dichotomies, the caricatures and the morass of soggy opinion. Ick. Bob T. It is your own disparagement of Boyk's talk that I find disturbing. This is a seminar given by a pianist as guest lecturer to a bunch of ee students, who are not audio specialists or professionals or even ee's. As such he is simply and entertainingly trying to give them a general education on all the things that can happen in trying to record and reproduce music. This is a very false picture. Boyk is not employed by Cal Tech as 'a pianist'. To be sure, he is Pianist in Residence, He is no longer Pianist in residence at Cal Tech. Indeed not - nor is he anything else at Cal Tech, apparently. That is not what I see on his website. He anounced that his tenure as pianist in residence has come to an end. He does not say anything about not teaching at Cal Tech any longer. Here is the first line of his website.James Boyk Pianist in Residence, April 1974 - June 2004. Lecturer in Music in Electrical Engineering Director of the Music Lab California Institute of Technology Note that in his own CV, he quotes *no* connection with Cal Tech post June 2004. Basically, he's gone.................... I note that he specifically cites his tenure as pianist in residence as April 1974- June 2004 and I note he refers to himself as Lecturer in Music in Electrical Engineering, Director of the Music Lab at Cal Tech in the present tense. I certainly hope you have information beyond what is on his website to support your assertion that he no longer teaches at Cal Tech. but he also teaches courses in the combining of engineering and music. The class he teaches is titled "Projects in Music & Science" That would be 'taught', no? I'd say no until I hear otherwise. Interesting that you can't actually quote anything - even from Boyk's own self-promotional website - that suggests that he has now *any* connection with Cal Tech........ What did you not understand about "Lecturer in Music in Electrical Engineering Director of the Music Lab California Institute of Technology" Looks like a quote to me that strongly suggests James Boyk currently holds a position at Cal Tech. While we might indeed agree that he has no technical credentials, The two of you might agree but obviously the administration at Cal Tech, arguably one of the best schools in the world in science, does not agree. I doubt they would have anyone teach a class titled "Projects in music and *science*" if they thought he lacked the "credentials" to do so. Nonetheless, they did. Boyk has no engineering (or science) credentials whatever. Electronic Construction, Mho Engineering, Toledo, 1962. Electronic Design and Construction, Ottawa Chemical Co., Toledo, 1961. You call those 'engineering credentials'? Are you asserting that they are not credentials in any way? That was your assertion. But you have also asserted that James Boyk is no longer teaching at Cal Tech. I hope you have information to support that assertion. I would be prone to give the administration at Cal Tech the edge on this opinion. They know Boyk better than you and they know science better than you. So that's why they didn't renew his contract this year? Maybe they didn't want to fund a pianist in residence any longer. It was a student government decision I believe. That decision obviously has no bearing on Cal Tech's administrative decision to have him teach a science class. He also no longer teaches a science class, or any other class..... How do you know? class that he has taught for 25 years. if he were as incompeent as you claim you'd think the folk at Cal Tech would have caught on by now don't you? Here are some comments by his students on that his class. snip self-gratification culled from Boyk's own website Doesn't that in itself tell you useful things about the guy? Just go *read* his own website for some insight. Yes it did. Why snip all those students' comments? They told me that a number of world class science students had a very high opinion of Boyk and his class at Cal Tech. Like I said before, I think the students and administration have a better perspective on Boyk and a great deal more knowledge and experience in science than you. I think their opinions hold more water than yours on Boyk. Now, try to find any *real* engineer who is so insecure that he feels the need to puff himself up like that....................... Oh come on. Now you are attacking his credibility because he promotes himself? That's just ridiculous. Any I *have* attempted correspondence with Boyk on this matter, which resulted in him throwing a hissy fit and abandoning the field. That is your side of it. Indeed so. Perhaps Boyk might care to rebut in this forum? He used to do that. It seems he got tired of RAHE. I wonder why? Maybe he is tired of unfounded attacks on himself. I sure hope you have some valid reason to claim he is no longer at Cal Tech at all. In r.a.h-e, you can't just puff yourself up based on academic tenure, you actually have to provide cogent arguments for your beliefs and assertions. No you don't. You just have to follow some simple rules for posting. Boyk came here and got his fingers burned. I've read some of his exchanges. I saw something quite different than you did. Please note that I cast no aspersions upon his abilities either as a pianist or as a recording enginneer, I simply object to his spouting unscientific rubbish at a fine engineering institution. Luckily, that seems to have been terminated. Cal Tech is a science and engineering institution. As to whether he teaches there anymore, I'd like to see something concrete on that. It seems that the administration or the students didn't find his work rubbish during his 25 years there. Unlike you they were there with him during this time. What institutions have you taught science or engineering at? |
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Stewart Pinkerton wrote:
Note that in his own CV, [Boyk] quotes *no* connection with Cal Tech post June 2004. Basically, he's gone.................... He's listed in their directory as " Lecturer in Electrical Engineering/ Music" http://makeashorterlink.com/?F22935A29 It seems he got tired of RAHE. I wonder why? In r.a.h-e, you can't just puff yourself up based on academic tenure, you actually have to provide cogent arguments for your beliefs and assertions. Boyk came here and got his fingers burned. On Usenet, those with the most cogent arguments don't always have the last word. Persistence counts a lot, and free time. Another issue is whether having the most cogent argument means one is right or not. The history of science (not to mention politics) is full of cogent argument that were wrong. Maybe Boyk just got tired of the interminable arguments. Mike Prager North Carolina, USA |
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"Bob Marcus" wrote in message ...
In my (few) exchanges with him, he seemed to take the position that he is an expert listener, and therefore we should just accept it when he says he can hear differences that don't show up in blind tests. I don't believe this is an accurate description of James Boyk's position or philosophy. He's always encouraged his students to run blind tests to determine whether something's audible, and let us make up our own minds. Something that he liked to tell his students was, paraphrased, "You don't get to decide which one you like better unless you can tell them apart" (in a good, blind test). Even on matters where we were obviously far less experienced, like commenting on his musical interpretations during his afternoon musical seminars, he never forced his far more expert musical opinions on a bunch of newbies. He may point out things that we didn't consider, elaborate on them, demonstrate them, and encourage us to explore or think about them, but he never forced anyone to accept his point of view on his word alone. His technical papers talk about things that "might" be audible (e.g., subtle forms of distortion, ultrasonic harmonics), but I see no evidence that he's tested those suppositions in a controlled manner. I believe that one paper (about the suprasonic energy of musical instruments) goes to some length to point out that audibility of suprasonic signals is supposition (citing the popular Oohashi paper), and doesn't claim that they're audible. I don?t get the sense that these are central issues in his course, however, so it just might be that his students were/are getting a reasonably good education, even if the prof does have a few off-the-wall beliefs. EE/Mu 107 (Boyk's class) is a fine example of one of the best aspects of Caltech: cross-disciplinary work and collaboration. It gives students a chance to apply the many basic tools in physics, EE, math, etc. they've studied to issues affecting music and audio, and to see how those issues affect those tools. It's a give-and-take between the two, with little that's cut and dry, and usually lots of things that are kind of messy. As a result, the class encourages keeping an open mind about new possibilities rather any kind of rigid dogma, as well as a disciplined approach to investigation so we don't get waylaid by the messiness. Many of the things we're discussing here and elsewhere in the group are central issues in his class, and his students get the (intellectual) space and freedom to investigate them, rather than being bent to some pre-defined dogma. --Andre |
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Robert Trosper wrote in message ...
Whatever he said in class, and whatever effect it had on you is in a parallel universe to this discussion. The article does not, in my opinion, contain much besides the strongly held views and opinions. I have no opinion on his behavior, character, shoe size or preference in foods outside of the article. I will say that I could have qualified my statement further to make it clear that my opinion is based ON THIS ARTIC LE. Actually, I believe they are closely related. How one interprets the tone and intent of his seminar depends on knowing the kind of person he is. I can take his remarks only in a negative light assuming certain things about his intent, and proceed as you did. It doesn't change his point or mine. My point is that the effect of familiarity swamps the change in specification. Your point is different and also valid. I'm assuming you're allowing the converse that "worse" specs for one box don't necessarily lead to worse (or even different) audible results. Say we change the 3dB down point from 2.4 GHz to 2.2 GHz. Audible? As you've shown, there are many other mechanisms that can affect the audible characteristics of an audio component, hence his point that the standard audio specs don't mean much for predicting perception. Even if Boyk didn't claim this, I don't see why this is such a controversial point, as it's well-known that standard audio specs (THD+N, SNR, simple frequency response, etc.) don't really predict audibility except in the grossest cases, either positively or negatively. Not having the cheap speakers in hand, I can't say definitively. I do know that many cheap speakers use materials with low resonance (MDF) for that reason, and that applying asphalt is cheap. I hope I don't need to point out that resonance control in a speaker involves more than just asphalt and MDF, right? Consider the myriad varieties and numbers of driver, crossover, and box resonances for starters, and I doubt asphalt and MDF will solve any great number of them. Also, MDF in and of itself doesn't have resonance, as that depends on the physical construction of the box. What MDF has is high damping which will reduce certain kinds of box resonances by dissipating their energy as heat, but it won't do much for a metal cone's resonance. Consider too the extra weight added by using MDF and asphalt (in those applications where they do something useful), and how that affects the costs and manufacturability of our inexpensive speaker, so even if MDF and asphalt were the universal salve for resonance, they may not be very practical solutions. What he seems to be saying is that it somehow worse to do the good that o ne can to a price point than not to do anything at all! Either buy good, and more expensive speakers, or suffer. While which design philosophy one picks is definitely a matter of personal preferences, a limiter box like the one he describes isn't free, therefore a speaker system that has one cannot be produced to the same price point as one which doesn't, but otherwise has the same physical speaker characteristics. The extra money spent on the limiter box could be used in other possibly beneficial ways on the speaker itself. The choice of words leads me to believe that it was James Boyk, and only James Boyk who could have heard the distortion or noticed the bag was leaking. The story would have made more sense to me if someone was just going ahead without listening to the playback at all, or had MISSED the less obvious distortion, and if something useful had been said about what to listen for. I don't think you're giving him the benefit of the doubt by taking his comments in this way, hence my comments about how he conducts his classes and his relationship with his students. He'd be the last person to claim that only he could hear the distortion. Think about it this way: if he were the only person who could hear the distortion, then it doesn't matter if the distortion were recorded because no one else would hear it. So why worry about it in the first place? I thought his description of the failure modes of the other two mics were pretty clear. --Andre |
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On 30 Aug 2004 01:30:13 GMT, (S888Wheel) wrote:
From: Stewart Pinkerton Date: 8/29/2004 2:04 PM Pacific Standard Time Message-id: On 29 Aug 2004 15:52:05 GMT, (S888Wheel) wrote: From: Stewart Pinkerton Date: 8/29/2004 7:23 AM Pacific Standard Time Message-id: On 28 Aug 2004 14:54:29 GMT, (S888Wheel) wrote: From: Stewart Pinkerton Date: 8/27/2004 12:16 PM Pacific Standard Time Message-id: On 26 Aug 2004 23:30:20 GMT, "Harry Lavo" wrote: "Robert Trosper" wrote in message ... Boyk actually says a few interesting things, but, for me it's all outweighed by the patronizing tone, the false dichotomies, the caricatures and the morass of soggy opinion. Ick. Bob T. It is your own disparagement of Boyk's talk that I find disturbing. This is a seminar given by a pianist as guest lecturer to a bunch of ee students, who are not audio specialists or professionals or even ee's. As such he is simply and entertainingly trying to give them a general education on all the things that can happen in trying to record and reproduce music. This is a very false picture. Boyk is not employed by Cal Tech as 'a pianist'. To be sure, he is Pianist in Residence, He is no longer Pianist in residence at Cal Tech. Indeed not - nor is he anything else at Cal Tech, apparently. That is not what I see on his website. He anounced that his tenure as pianist in residence has come to an end. He does not say anything about not teaching at Cal Tech any longer. Here is the first line of his website.James Boyk Pianist in Residence, April 1974 - June 2004. Lecturer in Music in Electrical Engineering Director of the Music Lab California Institute of Technology Note that in his own CV, he quotes *no* connection with Cal Tech post June 2004. Basically, he's gone.................... I note that he specifically cites his tenure as pianist in residence as April 1974- June 2004 and I note he refers to himself as Lecturer in Music in Electrical Engineering, Director of the Music Lab at Cal Tech in the present tense. I certainly hope you have information beyond what is on his website to support your assertion that he no longer teaches at Cal Tech. It now seems unclear as to whether he is totally gone, or retains his tenure as a lecturer. One can only hope................... but he also teaches courses in the combining of engineering and music. The class he teaches is titled "Projects in Music & Science" That would be 'taught', no? I'd say no until I hear otherwise. Interesting that you can't actually quote anything - even from Boyk's own self-promotional website - that suggests that he has now *any* connection with Cal Tech........ What did you not understand about "Lecturer in Music in Electrical Engineering Director of the Music Lab California Institute of Technology" Looks like a quote to me that strongly suggests James Boyk currently holds a position at Cal Tech. snip self-gratification culled from Boyk's own website Doesn't that in itself tell you useful things about the guy? Just go *read* his own website for some insight. Yes it did. Why snip all those students' comments? They told me that a number of world class science students had a very high opinion of Boyk and his class at Cal Tech. If looking at any other advert, do you take as a balanced view, the endorsements that you read on that advert? Now, try to find any *real* engineer who is so insecure that he feels the need to puff himself up like that....................... Oh come on. Now you are attacking his credibility because he promotes himself? That's just ridiculous. Really? Why is it ridiculous? Do you see any real engineers doing this? Or is this an American cultural thing? What institutions have you taught science or engineering at? Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach, lecture. Those who can't lecture, write textbooks................ I have OTOH been Head of Electronics and Computer Applications at the Production Engineering Research Association of Great Britain (PERA), which is one of the AIRO group of internationally respected research organisations, and also Engineering Systems Manager at Hughes Microelectronics Ltd, the only non-US-based division of the Hughes Aircraft Company. I did, rather than taught, unless you count consultance advice as 'teaching'. -- Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering |
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On 29 Aug 2004 21:56:07 GMT, "Bob Marcus" wrote:
A clarification: Bob Marcus wrote: Stewart Pinkerton wrote: This is a very false picture. Boyk is not employed by Cal Tech as 'a pianist'. Actually, he is no longer employed by Cal Tech at all. His contract was not renewed this spring. The contract that wasn't renewed was for his post as "pianist in residence" (by the dept . of student affairs, not the "student government"). But the 2004-05 online catalog still lists him as professor of "Projects in Music and Science," a course jointly offered by the depts. of electrical engineering, computer science, and music. Course catalogs often miss last-minute changes, however, so this isn't definitive proof that he still teaches at Cal Tech, either. Boyk's technical background includes an undergraduate degree in mathematics and a good bit of apparently relevant work experience in the electronics and related industries. It's not unusual for a college, even one as prestigious as Cal Tech, to employ adjunct faculty with on-the-job experience, rather than formal training. So I don't think it's fair to say, on the basis of his resume, that he is unqualified to teach what he's been teaching at Cal Tech. I accept that basic point, but his expressed opunions on such matters as 'cable sound' certrainly do disqualify him. Any *real* scientist would have tested such theories in double-blind experiments. Boyk simply says "I am a recoirding genius and I heard it, so it *must* be there". Bad science, and you don't really want an actively *bad* scientist teaching your kids, do you? As for his heretical beliefs, they appear to be concentrated on the perceptual psychology side of things. In my (few) exchanges with him, he seemed to take the position that he is an expert listener, and therefore we should just accept it when he says he can hear differences that don't show up in blind tests. His technical papers talk about things that "might" be audible (e.g., subtle forms of distortion, ultrasonic harmonics), but I see no evidence that he's tested those suppositions in a controlled manner. I don’t get the sense that these are central issues in his course, however, so it just might be that his students were/are getting a reasonably good education, even if the prof does have a few off-the-wall beliefs. Let's hope so. -- Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering |
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Stewart Pinkerton wrote:
On 29 Aug 2004 15:52:05 GMT, (S888Wheel) wrote: That is your side of it. Indeed so. Perhaps Boyk might care to rebut in this forum? He used to do that. It seems he got tired of RAHE. I wonder why? In r.a.h-e, you can't just puff yourself up based on academic tenure, you actually have to provide cogent arguments for your beliefs and assertions. Boyk came here and got his fingers burned. Last I saw of him, he was holding forth on the aptly-named Audio Asylum. -- -S. |
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#29
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Mike Prager wrote:
Stewart Pinkerton wrote: Note that in his own CV, [Boyk] quotes *no* connection with Cal Tech post June 2004. Basically, he's gone.................... He's listed in their directory as " Lecturer in Electrical Engineering/ Music" http://makeashorterlink.com/?F22935A29 It seems he got tired of RAHE. I wonder why? In r.a.h-e, you can't just puff yourself up based on academic tenure, you actually have to provide cogent arguments for your beliefs and assertions. Boyk came here and got his fingers burned. On Usenet, those with the most cogent arguments don't always have the last word. Persistence counts a lot, and free time. Another issue is whether having the most cogent argument means one is right or not. The history of science (not to mention politics) is full of cogent argument that were wrong. Maybe Boyk just got tired of the interminable arguments. Mike Prager North Carolina, USA That might be because he couldn't win any of them :-) |
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From: Stewart Pinkerton
Date: 8/30/2004 4:43 PM Pacific Standard Time Message-id: On 30 Aug 2004 01:30:13 GMT, (S888Wheel) wrote: From: Stewart Pinkerton Date: 8/29/2004 2:04 PM Pacific Standard Time Message-id: On 29 Aug 2004 15:52:05 GMT, (S888Wheel) wrote: From: Stewart Pinkerton Date: 8/29/2004 7:23 AM Pacific Standard Time Message-id: On 28 Aug 2004 14:54:29 GMT, (S888Wheel) wrote: From: Stewart Pinkerton Date: 8/27/2004 12:16 PM Pacific Standard Time Message-id: On 26 Aug 2004 23:30:20 GMT, "Harry Lavo" wrote: "Robert Trosper" wrote in message ... Boyk actually says a few interesting things, but, for me it's all outweighed by the patronizing tone, the false dichotomies, the caricatures and the morass of soggy opinion. Ick. Bob T. It is your own disparagement of Boyk's talk that I find disturbing. This is a seminar given by a pianist as guest lecturer to a bunch of ee students, who are not audio specialists or professionals or even ee's. As such he is simply and entertainingly trying to give them a general education on all the things that can happen in trying to record and reproduce music. This is a very false picture. Boyk is not employed by Cal Tech as 'a pianist'. To be sure, he is Pianist in Residence, He is no longer Pianist in residence at Cal Tech. Indeed not - nor is he anything else at Cal Tech, apparently. That is not what I see on his website. He anounced that his tenure as pianist in residence has come to an end. He does not say anything about not teaching at Cal Tech any longer. Here is the first line of his website.James Boyk Pianist in Residence, April 1974 - June 2004. Lecturer in Music in Electrical Engineering Director of the Music Lab California Institute of Technology Note that in his own CV, he quotes *no* connection with Cal Tech post June 2004. Basically, he's gone.................... I note that he specifically cites his tenure as pianist in residence as April 1974- June 2004 and I note he refers to himself as Lecturer in Music in Electrical Engineering, Director of the Music Lab at Cal Tech in the present tense. I certainly hope you have information beyond what is on his website to support your assertion that he no longer teaches at Cal Tech. It now seems unclear as to whether he is totally gone, or retains his tenure as a lecturer. There was never any reason to suspect he did not retain his tunure as a lecturer and head of the music lab. One can only hope................... Wow, You wish for him to be fired. IMO that is just plain ugly. but he also teaches courses in the combining of engineering and music. The class he teaches is titled "Projects in Music & Science" That would be 'taught', no? I'd say no until I hear otherwise. Interesting that you can't actually quote anything - even from Boyk's own self-promotional website - that suggests that he has now *any* connection with Cal Tech........ What did you not understand about "Lecturer in Music in Electrical Engineering Director of the Music Lab California Institute of Technology" Looks like a quote to me that strongly suggests James Boyk currently holds a position at Cal Tech. Nonanswer noted. snip self-gratification culled from Boyk's own website Doesn't that in itself tell you useful things about the guy? Just go *read* his own website for some insight. Yes it did. Why snip all those students' comments? They told me that a number of world class science students had a very high opinion of Boyk and his class at Cal Tech. If looking at any other advert, do you take as a balanced view, the endorsements that you read on that advert? What does this have to do with the *fact* that a number of science students that have been bright and talented enough to get into one the worlds most grestest institutions of science and engineering have sang his praises? Unlike you they have actually been through Boyk's course and have a first hand experience to base an opinion. Now, try to find any *real* engineer who is so insecure that he feels the need to puff himself up like that....................... Oh come on. Now you are attacking his credibility because he promotes himself? That's just ridiculous. Really? Why is it ridiculous? Because in a free market world people promote themselves. It has no bearing on one's credibility. Do you see any real engineers doing this? I haven't looked. I wouldn't have seen Boyk doing it if I hadn't looked at his webpage. Or is this an American cultural thing? Self promotion? Yes it is something we do here. No one over there promotes themselves? What institutions have you taught science or engineering at? Those who can, do. Then what have you done in audio? Boyk has produced some of the bests ounding recordings in the business. What did you *do*? Those who can't, teach. Sorry but the teachers at Cal tech also are doers. Do you suppose you are a better scientist or engineer than any of the teachers at Cal Tech? There are a few teachers there with Nobel prizes. What do you have? Those who can't teach, lecture. What school did you go to that none of the teachers lectured? Are you so unaware of the world of science that you didn't know that many of the greatest scientists have lectured/taught at institutions like Cal Tech? Those who can't lecture, write textbooks................ I have OTOH been Head of Electronics and Computer Applications at the Production Engineering Research Association of Great Britain (PERA), which is one of the AIRO group of internationally respected research organisations, and also Engineering Systems Manager at Hughes Microelectronics Ltd, the only non-US-based division of the Hughes Aircraft Company. I did, rather than taught, Did what? What have you done that would make your opinion of Boyk more valid than the administration at Cal Tech? What have you done in audio that would make your opinions more valid than Boyks on audio? unless you count consultance advice as 'teaching'. |
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Maybe Boyk just got tired of the interminable arguments. That might be because he couldn't win any of them You are repeating what I just said: on Usenet, the person with the loudest voice wins. Mike Prager North Carolina, USA |
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On 31 Aug 2004 02:01:20 GMT, (S888Wheel) wrote:
From: Stewart Pinkerton Date: 8/30/2004 4:43 PM Pacific Standard Time Message-id: It now seems unclear as to whether he is totally gone, or retains his tenure as a lecturer. There was never any reason to suspect he did not retain his tunure as a lecturer and head of the music lab. There was, given Bob Marcus original statement (since modified) that 'his contract has not been renewed'. However, Boyk has himself in e-mail confirmed that his tenure as 'Lecturer in Music in Electrical Engineering' continues. One can only hope................... Wow, You wish for him to be fired. IMO that is just plain ugly. I wish for someone who expresses claims as ludicrous as 'cable sound' to be kept away from impressionable engineering students. I would be more than happy for him to continue as 'pianist in residence', and for him to keep producing great recordings. My *only* problem is that he teaches a class with 'Science' in the title, and that he espouses unscientific rubbish such as 'cable sound'. If looking at any other advert, do you take as a balanced view, the endorsements that you read on that advert? What does this have to do with the *fact* that a number of science students that have been bright and talented enough to get into one the worlds most grestest institutions of science and engineering have sang his praises? Unlike you they have actually been through Boyk's course and have a first hand experience to base an opinion. Or is this an American cultural thing? Self promotion? Yes it is something we do here. No one over there promotes themselves? Not to the same degree, and certainly not in the professions. it's a 'professional integrity' sort of thing. Just a cultural difference, I guess. What institutions have you taught science or engineering at? Those who can, do. Then what have you done in audio? Boyk has produced some of the bests ounding recordings in the business. What did you *do*? I designed equipment which can hear and indentify a submarine at a range of 2,000 miles. Not very musical, but technically much more demanding than domestic audio. Those who can't, teach. Sorry but the teachers at Cal tech also are doers. Do you suppose you are a better scientist or engineer than any of the teachers at Cal Tech? There are a few teachers there with Nobel prizes. What do you have? We are not talking about me, nor about the top-class scientists and engineers who are indeed well represented at Cal Tech. We are talking about James Boyk and his wacky audio ideas. Those who can't teach, lecture. What school did you go to that none of the teachers lectured? This may be a semantic difference between English and 'murrican. In the UK, teachers teach at schools, lecturers lecture at colleges and Universities. It is not normal for UK lecturers to do what might be regarded as 'teaching', i.e. *interacting* with their students, apart from tutorial classes. OTOH, it is not normal here for school teachers to merely 'lecture', i.e. to spout a pile of information and let the students pick it up as best they may. A good teacher interacts with his pupils and extracts the very best from each of them. We all remember the good teachers. It would seem from Andrew Yew's comments that Boyk has a more 'hands on' style in his 'Projects' class. Indeed, if what Andrew says about the course (and Boyk's encouragement of blind tests and personal discovery, rather than reliance on authority) is correct, it would seem that Boyk keeps his personal wacky ideas out of his course, which would render my opinion on his suitability for this work, incorrect. Are you so unaware of the world of science that you didn't know that many of the greatest scientists have lectured/taught at institutions like Cal Tech? I am well aware of this, but we are not talking about them, we are talking about James Boyk. Indeed, the whole thrust of my argument has always been that Cal Tech *is* a world-class technical university, and I don't expect someone who supports the notion of 'cable sound' to be resident there! -- Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering |
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On 31 Aug 2004 01:59:27 GMT, (S888Wheel) wrote:
From: Stewart Pinkerton Date: 8/30/2004 4:43 PM Pacific Standard Time Message-id: On 29 Aug 2004 21:56:07 GMT, "Bob Marcus" wrote: Boyk's technical background includes an undergraduate degree in mathematics and a good bit of apparently relevant work experience in the electronics and related industries. It's not unusual for a college, even one as prestigious as Cal Tech, to employ adjunct faculty with on-the-job experience, rather than formal training. So I don't think it's fair to say, on the basis of his resume, that he is unqualified to teach what he's been teaching at Cal Tech. I accept that basic point, but his expressed opinions on such matters as 'cable sound' certainly do disqualify him. Any *real* scientist would have tested such theories in double-blind experiments. He did on at least one ocassion and he published the results in an article in Stereophile. You really should consider getting the facts before attacking Boyk. Please cite this article, I cannot find it. Boyk simply says "I am a recording genius and I heard it, so it *must* be there". Cite the source of your quote please. Prove he has ever said that. OK, I was paraphrasing, but the basic attitude is prevalent, as you well know. -- Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering |
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"In my (few) exchanges with him, he seemed to take the position that he is
an expert listener, and therefore we should just accept it when he says he can hear differences that don't show up in blind tests." Which is of course the stance, tactic, of all those who appoint themselves such, some publish hifi mags, others market products, and some trade in non-technical appointments in the academy. Guruism is the currency of this and similar, including astrology and esp and ufo and etc. areas of unsupported/unsupportable claims. There is the implied if not explicit, "I hear it, I really really do, don't you believe me?" path garnished with scientism. |
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On 31 Aug 2004 23:27:16 GMT, Mike Prager wrote:
Maybe Boyk just got tired of the interminable arguments. That might be because he couldn't win any of them You are repeating what I just said: on Usenet, the person with the loudest voice wins. What a strange attitude, for someone posting on a forum which is by definition silent and uninterruptible! And in this case, even moderated to exclude bad behaviour. -- Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering |
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Andre Yew wrote:
"Bob Marcus" wrote in message ... In my (few) exchanges with him, he seemed to take the position that he is an expert listener, and therefore we should just accept it when he says he can hear differences that don't show up in blind tests. I don't believe this is an accurate description of James Boyk's position or philosophy.* He's always encouraged his students to run blind tests to determine whether something's audible, and let us make up our own minds.* Something that he liked to tell his students was, paraphrased, "You don't get to decide which one you like better unless you can tell them apart" (in a good, blind test). Even on matters where we were obviously far less experienced, like commenting on his musical interpretations during his afternoon musical seminars, he never forced his far more expert musical opinions on a bunch of newbies.* He may point out things that we didn't consider, elaborate on them, demonstrate them, and encourage us to explore or think about them, but he never forced anyone to accept his point of view on his word alone. Nevertheless, he believes he can hear differences among certain types of audio equipment, and so far as I am aware he has never offered any objective evidence that he can do so. Given that, I'd say he's asking us to take his assertions on faith. BTW, be careful not to confuse questions of audibility with questions of artistic judgment. No one denies that his musical judgments are well-informed. His technical papers talk about things that "might" be audible (e.g., subtle forms of distortion, ultrasonic harmonics), but I see no evidence that he's tested those suppositions in a controlled manner. I believe that one paper (about the suprasonic energy of musical instruments) goes to some length to point out that audibility of suprasonic signals is supposition (citing the popular Oohashi paper), and doesn't claim that they're audible. Well, one doesn't have to just suppose things. One can test them. An awful lot of people have tested the audibility of suprasonic signals and, Oohashi aside, have come up empty. How many of those papers does he cite? bob __________________________________________________ _______________ Is your PC infected? Get a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfee® Security. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy...n.asp?cid=3963 |
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Stewart Pinkerton wrote in message ...
You were a student in Boyk's 'Projects in Music and Engineering' class? Yes, I was in 1993, the last term of my senior year at Caltech. As is typical for many projects that take a life of their own, my project started out simply as a reading of papers in perceptual coding, inspired by the recent introduction of Philips's DCC and Sony's MD devices. Pretty soon, Jim Boyk put me in touch with Bart Locanthi, Sr., who was informally investigating ways of meaningfully measuring perceptual coders, and I got to visit and talk to him at his home in the Pasadena foothills for quite a while about perceptual coding, as well as other audio and non-audio issues (after "passing" a somewhat harrowing phone interview where he asked me for the spectra of various signals --- it turned out those signals were signals he was considering for his tests). Jim believed it would be a Good Thing to talk to Bart, whereas I was scared out of my wits, so one day he dialed Bart up at his office, briefly introduced himself, handed me the phone, and walked away to attend to other things, whereupon the aforementioned interview commenced. We also got Dolby to loan us an AC-2 codec so we could perform listening tests on the live mic feed from Caltech's very fine chamber/recital hall that's a central tool of the class. I think we got DCC and MD devices as well. All in all, it was one of the most satisfactory classes I had taken, giving me the chance to apply many of the tools I'd studied to real-world, interesting problems. There was also an air of excitement in the lab as you could peek in and see what fellow students were working on, and share in their elation (or disappointment as the case may be) as their projects started to come together (or not). For example, someone was working on a dipole woofer that had a very interesting baffle design, and correction feedback loop using a laser interferometer on the woofer. I remember someone else who wanted to write their own oversampling filters for a handbuilt DAC, wire-wrapping a high-speed (20 MHz?) TI DSP that actually worked at the end! Basically, almost whatever you wanted to work on, Jim Boyk would help, guide, and support you as well as he could --- he'd put as much energy into the project as you were putting in, and sometimes more (for example, I think at the end, he was more interested in the codec listening tests than I was, and would play with them on his own time, as I remember coming into the lab one day, and being told that he'd figured out an overload problem we were having with one of the codecs and had performed additional listening tests on them). Because of these positive experiences, I'm having a hard time reading some of the false and uncharitable characterizations of him derived from a transcript of a single talk he gave. He certainly had strong opinions about many audio issues, and he wasn't shy about sharing them, but he was always open and curious about new ideas, and encouraged us to figure things out for ourselves. --Andre |
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